Sophos Cloud UTM 9 (Auto Scaling PAYG)
Sophos | 9.719Linux/Unix, Other 9.719 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
It improved bandwidth utilization and provided link load balancing features for internet and intranet lease lines
We were looking for a solution which provided a single view for both a wired and wireless network. We were previously using the Cyberoam 200ia firewall appliance and wanted an appliance which could support 1500 to 3000 corporate users. The solution also required a wireless access controller scalable to at least a 125 second wave 802.11 ac wireless access point. We purchased a Sophos XG 450 appliance with Sophos wireless access points.
How has it helped my organization?
It improved bandwidth utilization and provided link load balancing features for internet and intranet lease lines. It also provided good security for internal users.
What is most valuable?
* A good package overall
* A nice UTM appliance with a good GUI and reports.
* Configuring web access controls in the appliance is a bit typical and requires debarring and listing separately. Once configured, the solution works beautifully.
What needs improvement?
Initially, there were problems of wireless access points not getting detected and lease lines were getting disconnected after one hour. Sophos replaced the appliance, but the issue was not resolved . The matter got escalated to their international support and the issue was identified as a bug where long distance fiber connections are used over single mode fiber. The patch was shipped by Sophos with a promise to fix the issue in the next release.
Now, the appliance is working fine. The issue of wireless access points was due to some compatibility issues with the D-Link switch. I provided the Cisco 2900 series switches to connect to the wireless access points by creating a separate wireless LAN port on the firewall.
For how long have I used the solution?
Less than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Initially, there were issues with the wireless network as wireless access points were disappearing from the dashboard after some time. Later issues were resolved by connecting the wireless access points through Cisco switches.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No scalability issues.
How is customer service and technical support?
Support is very good.
Which solutions did we use previously?
We used to use Cyberoam 200ia. It required to an upgrade due to end of life and the changed requirement of its organisation.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complex as different VLANs had to be created for the business network, wireless network for corporate users, wireless network for guest users, and a separate VLAN for the communications network and the VC. QoS had to be enabled for different type of services. In addition, link load balancing was also configured and tested for internet lease lines and intranet MPLS lease lines.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented through a vendor team, and their expertise level was good.
What was our ROI?
ROI has yet to be calculated.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We purchased the appliance with five years onsite support and licenses.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
FortiGate 1000D.
What other advice do I have?
- Leave a Comment |
- Mark review as helpful
It can identify threats quickly, then find the affected devices and quarantine them
I am using it for security, antivirus, and malware detection.
How has it helped my organization?
It has helped by identifying threats within the company. If there are computers or servers that are compromised, then we are able to identify them right away in the system.
What is most valuable?
It can identify threats quickly, then find the affected devices and quarantine them.
It ease of use: The GUI is easy to maneuver through; it is not complicated.
What needs improvement?
The support needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It has been stable. We haven't had issues. It does what it is supposed to do.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Since it is cloud-based, scalability works great. We have around 300 users in our environment.
How is customer service and technical support?
The technical support only communicates via email. I would prefer to communicate directly with someone.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We also considered Symantec and McAfee. We did not chose them because we had experience with both of them and were not happy with their platforms.
We chose Sophos for its ease of use and it detects malware and viruses that other companies can't detect.
What other advice do I have?
The product works. It helps you identify threats within the environment.
We were able to integrate it with different devices and the installation is straightforward.
We like the ease of deployment and the dashboards are good
It is used as an antivirus.
What is most valuable?
* Ease of deployment
* Licensing
* The dashboards are good.
What needs improvement?
They could reduce the price.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is good for us. We are only a company of about 400, so it is perfect.
How is customer service and technical support?
I have not used the technical support.
How was the initial setup?
The implementation with the AWS environment was good.
We haven't had any issues with deployment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing and licensing are both good and better than Sophos's competitors. This is why we went with the product.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at Symantec, but liked Sophos's licensing better.
What other advice do I have?
Consider the product, as it seems to be one of the top four.
It meets our compliance needs for antivirus, but the printed provisioning needs improvement.
We use it for antivirus.
How has it helped my organization?
It meets our compliance needs in an elastic computer environment.
What is most valuable?
It meets our compliance needs for antivirus.
What needs improvement?
The printed provisioning is the primary thing that needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a little too CPU resource intensive, so we would like to see improvements there.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We are running about a couple hundred EC2 instances. Overall, the AWS Marketplace product should be a better fit, but it is a little pricier.
How is customer service and technical support?
When we need technical support, we just engage the vendor, then figure out what our requirements are from there.
How was the initial setup?
The integration and configuration of this product on our AWS environment is a little clunky right now.
The product is a standalone in terms of integration.
What other advice do I have?
Going forward, we need to look at the provisioning pieces and the resource utilization.
It works well without any maintenance
* Firewalls
* Developer access
* VPN traffic
* Rerouting and routing.
I am using it to route traffic for developer access or regular traffic for my instances. I have a web application, and I control access to and from it in one of my environments.
How has it helped my organization?
All my needs are met at the moment.
What is most valuable?
Our policy is launch and forget. It works well without any maintenance. So far, it has worked pretty well regardless of the traffic.
What needs improvement?
The product could be simplified and made more self-explanatory.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I am stressing it quite a bit, and the stability is great. I haven't performed any maintenance on the instances in quite a while now. It works. I am happy because everything works well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
My throughput is moderate versus high throughput applications.
I am always holding a predefined number of instances, so I haven't had any issues.
How is customer service and technical support?
I have not used the technical support.
How was the initial setup?
The configuration was pretty complex on my side compared to OpenVPN. However, this might imply that Sophos has more use cases and capabilities. It depends.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I am also using OpenVPN.
Partially, for historic reasons, things were built prior to me being able to evaluate stuff. At the moment, we are using both solutions. In terms of pricing, when I need to spin up anything small with smaller requirements, I am using the free OpenVPN instead of Sophos UTM.
What other advice do I have?
Do your homework. Compare products. Use what you need depending on your needs.
It has allowed us to have a solution that we can maintain and not have to babysit all the time
Our Sophos UTM provides a secure VPN solution. It allows us to have a VPN solution that limits access to certain sensitive areas in our environment.
How has it helped my organization?
It has made our organization more secure, because we are using a VPN. We are not accessing services directly. It allows us to segregate some of the traffic for individuals which may be more of a developer role rather than an operational role needing access to developer resources, but not necessarily production operational resources.
Previously, it was all intermixed, and access was kept under control by other means. This makes it easier and more streamlined.
What is most valuable?
* The VPN side of it.
* The ease of configuration of the VPN.
* Some of the end user self-serviceability of it without having to have a whole lot of touch from our operational group
What needs improvement?
The UI on it could stand a little improvement. In some areas, it is a little slow and clunky. It is sometimes not easy to find something. However, once you get used to it, it is pretty normal to use.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't had an issue with it yet.
Any given day, we have easily ten to 15 users on it constantly, plus some other ancillary services which go across the VPN to access resources in our environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It works for what we have, as we only need a couple of them. Scalability-wise, we don't need a whole lot.
How is customer service and technical support?
We have used technical support one time for a weird upgrade issue. Their response was good.
How was the initial setup?
It integrated well with AWS. The documentation was a little fuzzy on getting it to work with how the whole public exposure versus private exposure, then routing some of the traffic. However, once you read the documentation carefully, it comes out well. This goes back to the UI issue.
What was our ROI?
It makes it a lot easier for us to maintain things. Prior to it, things were more difficult. This means less time on us. We can focus on other things. The recovery is more in man-hours for us than anything else.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace is pretty straightforward. Because were entirely on AWS and don't have anything anywhere else. It made the most sense for us as a one stop shop.
The pricing is pretty reasonable. I don't think that it is overly expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at a couple other products. However, overall, Sophos UTM seemed to fit the bill. It has allowed us to have a solution that we can maintain and not have to babysit all the time.
What other advice do I have?
It is definitely worth looking at. It is a pretty good product.
It is integrated with our LDAP solution, and that integration is okay. Any LDAP integration can be hit or miss. It doesn't matter what it is, because it's LDAP. Since we use LDAP as a service, it's a little different, but it does work well.
It provides a solid firewall, but they could improve on the support
We are using as a firewall product.
How has it helped my organization?
It helped to connect our satellite offices to the main Amazon infrastructure in a circular way.
What is most valuable?
It provides a solid firewall.
What needs improvement?
We had some problems with the configuration. They had provided a CloudFormation template, and we had to go several rounds to make it work.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's pretty stable. For our usage, it has been pretty good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We are a small company with a small infrastructure. For our infrastructure, it is perfectly solid. I don't have experience using it on a larger scale.
How is customer service and technical support?
They could definitely improve on the support, especially in other countries. Right now, it is just average. For example, we have a team in India. When they face issues, they have to go to Australia or talk to somebody in the US to receive support. They should be more responsive and have more local offices.
What about the implementation team?
AWS has been pretty good. It is well integrated and pretty user-friendly. Initially, we experienced issues with the configuration because Sophos provided us a CloudFormation template, which caused us some back and forth. By now, the process may have improved.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Purchasing it through the AWS Marketplace went smoothly. We did not have any issues and the pricing was decent.
We decided to purchase through the AWS Marketplace because of the integration with the AWS infrastructure, firing it up and configuring it was very seamless.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We originally considered Barracuda and another solution.
We chose Sophos because we thought that it provided superior service. Also, they have a long history in the market, and I received a recommendation from one of my consultants.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend to take a look a product, as it is a good product apart from the improvements that I mentioned. We are very happy with the product so far.
It is used as a standalone. We don't integrate it with other systems.
It has a single pane of glass which allows me to manage all my VPCs from a single instance, managing all my firewalls from one place
Every single Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) has Sophos in front of it. I also use it for Outbound Gateways in my WorkSpaces environment.
How has it helped my organization?
Our company trusts Sophos without even seeing it, as it provides us comfortability while allowing for flexibility.
What is most valuable?
Its scaling capability.
Sophos has a single pane of glass which allows me to manage all my VPCs from a single instance, managing all my firewall from one place, which is huge for me. When you have multiple VPCs and multiple accounts, it becomes too cumbersome to use a product that you have to look at individually. With Sophos, I can look at one place and see everything: my logs, filters, firewall rules, etc.
What needs improvement?
I would like them to move from the Classic Load Balancer to the Network Load Balancer. This would make it easier to do certain things with Amazon. They are able to do some enhancements with Network Load Balancer that they are unable to do with Classic Load Balancer.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have never had a stability issue with Sophos. It self-heals.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not run into a scalability issue since it is scalable past my license.
How is customer service and technical support?
I have had great technical support. The only issues that I have experienced with technical support are when I get a Tier 1 support person who knows about the on-premise product, not the AWS side of the product.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation and configuration through AWS is easy. They have cloud configuration templates, which are easy to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We originally purchased the solution through the AWS Marketplace. I started my proof of concept doing pay-as-you-go, then moved to a VAR for a 'Bring Your Own Licence' (BYOL) licensing model. The BYOL license still requires you to accept the terms of the AWS Marketplace to deploy.
It is easy to purchase through the AWS Marketplace. In addition, if you have a budget for the AWS Marketplace, then your purchases will appear on your regular Amazon bill, which makes things even easier.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I went and looked at Check Point eight years ago, because back then, I loved Check Point. They also weren't many solutions like this back then. AWS Marketplace did not even exist eight years ago!
After comparing Check Point and Sophos pricing, I questioned whether the decimal for Sophos was in the wrong spot. Sophos's competitors were so much higher in price.
Originally, cost sold me because Check Point and Sophos had the same features. Now, Sophos has surpassed Check Point's features.
What other advice do I have?
If you haven't tried it, do so.
Not the AV Product we choose
What do you like best about the product?
Very nice unified interface. Clean looking product. Multiple features available in suite.
What do you dislike about the product?
Slows down computers, false positives, buggy software. Did not work how we thought it would.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We ended up choosing a competing product because it did not tick all the boxes that we wanted.
Sophos Security
What do you like best about the product?
The company chose Sophos for our systems and it gives us the security of allowing employees to have their company email on their personal devices.
What do you dislike about the product?
To this point, I have not encountered a problem.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The program is available to be downloaded on our mobile devices, which allows employees the ability to have the company email on their private devices. They can review and respond to their email regardless of where they are.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
I would highly recomend this program to other companies. This has brought a secure feeling to allowing employees to use their personal devices to monitor their company email.
showing 31 - 40